No More Parades - Ford Madox Ford (the gingerbread man read aloud .TXT) 📗

of peers!⁠ ⁠… You don’t catch me⁠ ⁠… No fear!” she mimicked his creaky voice. “You can go away as soon as you’ve shown yourself as my escort⁠ ⁠…”

“But, good God!” Perowne cried out, “that’s just what I mustn’t do. Campion said that if he heard any more of my being seen about with you he would have me sent back to my beastly regiment. And my beastly regiment is in the trenches⁠ ⁠… You don’t see me in the trenches, do you?”

“I’d rather see you there than in my own room,” Sylvia said. “Any day!”

“Ah, there you are!” Perowne exclaimed with animation. “What guarantee have I that if I do what you want I shall bask in your smile as you call it? I’ve got myself into a most awful hole, bringing you here without papers. You never told me you hadn’t any papers. General O’Hara, the P.M., has raised a most awful strafe about it⁠ ⁠… And what have I got for it?⁠ ⁠… Not the ghost of a smile⁠ ⁠… And you should see old O’Hara’s purple face!⁠ ⁠… Someone woke him from his afternoon nap to report to him about your heinous case and he hasn’t recovered from the indigestion yet⁠ ⁠… Besides, he hates Tietjens⁠ ⁠… Tietjens is always chipping away at his military police⁠ ⁠… O’Hara’s lambs⁠ ⁠…”

Sylvia was not listening, but she was smiling a slow smile at an inward thought. It maddened him.

“What’s your game?” he exclaimed. “Hell and hounds, what’s your game?⁠ ⁠… You can’t have come here to see⁠ ⁠… him. You don’t come here to see me, as far as I can see. Well then⁠ ⁠…”

Sylvia looked round at him with all her eyes, wide open as if she had just awakened from a deep sleep.

“I didn’t know I was coming,” she said. “It came into my head to come suddenly. Ten minutes before I started. And I came. I didn’t know papers were wanted. I suppose I could have got them if I had wanted them⁠ ⁠… You never asked me if I had any papers. You just froze on to me and had me into your special carriage⁠ ⁠… I didn’t know you were coming.”

That seemed to Perowne the last insult. He exclaimed:

“Oh, damn it, Sylvia! you must have known⁠ ⁠… You were at the Quirks’ squash on Wednesday evening. And they knew. My best friends.”

“Since you ask for it,” she said, “I didn’t know⁠ ⁠… And I would not have come by that train if I had known you would be going by it. You force me to say rude things to you.” She added: “Why can’t you be more conciliatory?” to keep him quiet for a little. His jaw dropped down.

She was wondering where Christopher had got the money to pay for a bed at the hotel. Only a very short time before she had drawn all the balance of his banking account, except for a shilling. It was the middle of the month and he could not have drawn any more pay⁠ ⁠… That, of course, was a try on her part. He might be forced into remonstrating. In the same way she had tried on the accusation that he had carried off her sheets. It was sheer wilfulness, and when she looked again at his motionless features she knew that she had been rather stupid⁠ ⁠… But she was at the end of her tether: she had before now tried making accusations against her husband, but she had never tried inconveniencing him⁠ ⁠… Now she suddenly realized the full stupidity of which she had been guilty. He would know perfectly well that those petty frightfulnesses of hers were not in the least her note; so he would know, too, that each of them was just a try on. He would say: “She is trying to make me squeal. I’m damned if I will!”

She would have to adopt much more formidable methods. She said: “He shall⁠ ⁠… he shall⁠ ⁠… he shall come to heel.”

Major Perowne had now closed his jaw. He was reflecting. Once he mumbled: “More conciliatory! Holy smoke!”

She was feeling suddenly in spirits: it was the sight of Christopher had done it: the perfect assurance that they were going to live under the same roof again. She would have betted all she possessed and her immortal soul on the chance that he would not take up with the Wannop girl. And it would have been betting on a certainty!⁠ ⁠… But she had had no idea what their relations were to be, after the war. At first she had thought that they had parted for good when she had gone off from their flat at four o’clock in the morning. It had seemed logical. But, gradually, in retreat at Birkenhead, in the still, white, nun’s room, doubt had come upon her. It was one of the disadvantages of living as they did that they seldom spoke their thoughts. But that was also at times an advantage. She had certainly meant their parting to be for good. She had certainly raised her voice in giving the name of her station to the taxi-man with the pretty firm conviction that he would hear her; and she had been pretty well certain that he would take it as a sign that the breath had gone out of their union⁠ ⁠… Pretty certain. But not quite!⁠ ⁠…

She would have died rather than write to him; she would die, now, rather than give any inkling that she wanted them to live under the same roof again⁠ ⁠… She said to herself:

“Is he writing to that girl?” And then: “No!⁠ ⁠… I’m certain that he isn’t.”⁠ ⁠… She had had all his letters stopped at the flat, except for a few circulars that she let dribble through to him, so that he might imagine that all his correspondence was coming through. From the letters to him that she did read she was pretty sure that he had given no other address than the flat in Gray’s Inn⁠ ⁠… But there had been no letters from Valentine Wannop⁠ ⁠… Two from Mrs. Wannop, two from his brother Mark, one from